Fifty Shades and Profiting Off Fanfic

The Associated Press had a story a few days ago about how Fifty Shades of Grey has its own fanfiction now, and it was a pretty interesting story. It brought to mind a rant on a fan fic rant community I saw recently where somebody was pointing out that a Twilight fic labeled as a [...]

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True Fans and Indie Publishing

Thanks to Twitter, today I stumbled on a 2008 post about True Fans — an example of the long tail of the Internet in action. The short version of the post is that artists don’t need to hit best-sellerdom to make a living — they just need 1,000 True Fans who will snap up their [...]

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Weighing the Value of Promotion vs. Writing

Dan Blank’s post last week about defining success has combined with some other things in my life right now to get me asking myself that very question. One of the things that’s been a challenge the past several weeks has been finding a way to balance writing with platform building and social media. Roz Morris [...]

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What’s Your Favorite Bookstore?

There’s a thread over on Kindle Boards about best bookstores. My personal favorite doesn’t fit because it’s a used bookstore, but it’s also a marvelous place that I wanted to share. The Shire’s located in an old textile mill in my hometown of Franklin, Mass., and it’s filled floor to ceiling with what must be [...]

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Is Amazon Using Its Market Presence to Break The Big Six?

OK, indie authors, how would you feel if you were selling an average of two books a minute or more for a five-day weekend? Sound crazy? Robert Bidinotto thought so — until he did just that this past weekend. If you were at Kindle Boards over the weekend, you might have seen the thread where [...]

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Q&A with Author and Former Broadcast Journalist Lauren Clark

Did yesterday’s excerpt of Stay Tuned pique your interest? Join us below for a Q&A with author Lauren Clark about Stay Tuned, her writing journey and her background in broadcast journalism. I’m glad to be able to share this with everybody — I always like to see another journalist or former journalist turning to this [...]

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Indies: We need to call for standards

This week, three of us ended up posting on various aspects of the same topic: My book blogger post, Don Linn’s Tragedy of the Commons publishing call to action and Porter Anderson’s weekly Writing on the Ether roundup of publishing news. If you haven’t read them, start with Don’s post, then Porter’s, then mine. Then [...]

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Book Bloggers: The New Publishing Gatekeepers

Indie publishing and its effect on traditional publishing is a work in progress, and we can’t fully measure its impact. But as we head into a holiday season where ereaders are likely to be a popular gift, it seems clear that book bloggers and reviewers are the next gatekeepers in the world of publishing. Originally, [...]

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Why Can’t Books Be Readable AND Great Fiction?

Today’s Toronto Star article on the readability controversy that plagued the Man Booker awards this year was the perfect connection among several writing bits that have been floating around in my brain lately and coming up in conversations with other writers. For those who missed it, Man Booker award judging panel chairwoman Dame Stella Rimington [...]

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Tagging on Amazon

Several of you have asked if there’s anything you can do now that Thrown Out is published. So I figured I’d post this here. Amazon only lets you put a book in two categories, even though it has a few thousand. Their alternative is tags, but it takes 20-25 people tagging a book to put [...]

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E-books and The Writer’s Minimum Viable Product

Joel Friedlander has a great blog post looking at the concept of the Minimum Viable Product for writers, and how e-books have affected that. In journalism terms, we always call it the minimum story, a necessity for any potentially time-consuming project. In both cases, it’s the lowest level you need to publish. In investigative reporting, [...]

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Genre vs. literary — and the gaping space between

E-Reads had a great post yesterday from Richard Curtis: “What Serious Writers Can Learn From Genre Comrades in Arms.” It was a great piece, originally written in 1990, and one that spoke particularly to me because I always wonder what’s in between those two camps. I love genre fiction. Mysteries and Nora Roberts make up [...]

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Thrown Out iBook now available

Apple now carries Thrown Out in the iTunes Store – just search for the title or my name and it will pop up.

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First review of Thrown Out!

I just got my first review of Thrown Out posted at Amazon — five stars! Jennie Coughlin’s Thrown Out is a wonderful creation. Her stories have an authentic small town feel, and after reading them I would swear I know her characters in real life. Their lives ring true, and the everyday challenges they face [...]

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Published: Thrown Out: Stories From Exeter

It’s official! My first book, Thrown Out: Stories from Exeter, is published — and the first copy sold within minutes. The official release date is tomorrow, but I wanted to post the link here for everybody who’s been reading this blog. I hope you enjoy! Reviews, comments and questions are very much appreciated. Get to [...]

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